Auto-Pen settings, one by one
Everything on the collection's Auto-Pen card, what it changes, and the default we recommend.
Open a collection → Control Room → Setup → the Auto-Pen card. Every post in the collection follows these settings; a post can override a few of them individually (noted below). Press Save Auto-Pen when you're done. Recurring actions, the card below it, has its own Save.
Auto-start on new queued posts
When a post is queued from Headlines or a Guest Story, write it immediately without anyone opening it. Used by collections on autopilot.
Step 1 · Research
On/off. Reads the web and writes an outline. Leave it on unless every post arrives with a full draft.
Direction check-in. Pause after research and email you two or three angles to choose from. Good for collections where the angle matters more than speed. Per-post override: the Research panel has the same toggle.
Auto-Pen always researches at full depth. The Outline detail choice in a post's Research panel (Barebones or Fleshed out) applies to research you start from that panel.
Step 2 · Write
On/off. The kernel step. Off only if you bring finished drafts and just want the passes.
Content template (default). The shape posts take, a listicle, a how-to, a comparison, or free-form prose. Templates are made on the Templates page (KB-208). Per-post override: the Auto-Pen panel's template picker.
Writes with (phantom sites only). The Write step names the site's voice, with a Change link to pick a different one than the organization default. See KB-701.
Written in. Who the narrator is. Press Change to pick one of three: No narrator (the publication's editorial voice, no "I" and no "we"; the default and the safe choice), We (the company is the author, right for most owned blogs), or I (a named person; needs a Byline, and without one posts fall back to "we"). With We or I there's a separate Allow first-hand experience claims switch, off by default. It lets posts say they watched or sat in on something. That reads as fact, not style, so turn it on only where the byline can stand behind it.
Step 3 · Guaranteed passes
Enhance is now a set of guaranteed passes: brand mention, visuals, internal links, external sources, and metadata. There is no Enhance switch and no flow to pick. Each pass has its own switch (or, for brand mention and internal links, a setting elsewhere on the page), and every post in the collection gets the passes that are on. They run after the writing, so they see the finished prose (KB-301).
To run one pass on a single post, open the post's Enhance panel and press its Run … now button (for example Run visuals now). An agent does the same with run_enhance_pass and reads the result with get_enhance_run; from the CLI it's letterstory enhance run <article-id> --pass <pass>, where the pass is visuals, internal_links, external_links or metadata. An agent switches passes for a whole collection with update_auto_pen_config.
Brand mention
Shown here as On or Off, with a Jump to it link to the brand mention setting further down. It's set there, not here.
Visuals
Runs once at the end of every post, after the writing and the brand mention, so it sees the finished article. A visual you removed by hand is not put back. Two switches. On a collection you start blank, both are off. Onboarding a site turns Comparison tables on, and Free-form diagrams too when the collection already has a diagram style bound.
- Comparison tables: fills the tables a template asks for. It never adds its own.
- Free-form diagrams: bespoke diagrams the model designs for a section, a timeline or a stepped flow. They're the expensive half. The card warns if no diagram style is bound to the collection and lets you bind or infer one right there (KB-210).
Internal links
Links to pages in this collection's sitemap. Shown here as On or Off; it's controlled by Keep internal links fresh under Recurring actions (below).
Add external sources
Off until you turn it on. Cites outside sources (documentation, research, other blogs) for the claims the article makes, at the end of every post. Domains you never want cited come from the organization's blocklist in Settings.
Preferred sources sits in the same box: pages and sites research reaches for first.
Generate metadata
Off until you turn it on. Writes JSON-LD, Meta tags, and llms.txt onto the article, each with its own switch. Runs last of all the passes so it describes the fully linked, illustrated article, and won't regenerate on a republish of an already-indexed post unless you run it by hand.
Brand mention
How much a post names your company in its own prose:
- Off: never (the default for phantom sites, which must stay independent).
- Subtle: named once, as one option among others.
- Woven: mentioned a few times, never the hero.
Per-post override: the Research panel. On phantom sites this is a Brand mention rate slider instead: the share of new posts that name you at all, spread across the schedule, with When included set to Subtle or Woven. It's a floor, not a cap: a post that names a competitor always names you too.
Recurring actions: keep internal links fresh
A separate card below Auto-Pen, with its own Save. When Keep internal links fresh is on, every new post gets internal links from this collection's own sitemap; a better page only gets in by replacing a weaker one (five links per post at most). The same switch opts already-published posts into a nightly refresh, a few a night, oldest first, republished as they're updated, so new pages get linked from old posts. Each post comes round about every four weeks.
The sitemap URL is edited on this card. A collection with a known site gets one suggested (its own domain plus /sitemap.xml); press Save to keep it. On collections that still hold a legacy Enhance flow, the nightly refresh runs through that flow's Add Internal Links stage, and Run now runs tonight's batch immediately. Without one, the card says the nightly refresh needs an Enhance flow; new posts still get links.
Shred (multi-model rewrite)
Rewrite each sentence of the finished draft through several independent models so no single model's statistical signature remains, while keeping facts, voice, and structure. The shred happens inside the kernel's revision loop, so the reviewer panel votes on the shredded text. Off by default; turning it on here only works if it's also enabled platform-wide, which is a Letterstory setting.
What we recommend
For a company blog: Research on, check-in off, Write on with no template and no narrator. Comparison tables, Keep internal links fresh, Add external sources and Generate metadata on. Brand mention subtle.
For a phantom site: exactly what onboarding sets: Research on, Write on, internal links, external sources, visuals and metadata on, mention off (KB-602).